2013 World Junior Championship – Game One Live Blog

Playing the World Juniors in Russia presents an interesting dilemma for hockey die-hards in Canada: wake up early or stay up late?

This thread may be the worst and least active thread of anything I’ve posted here at MLHS during my brief tenure or it may lead to an excellent and passionate conversation between the most committed (double-entendre) hockey fans on the internet. Either way, the tournament will be heaven for the vampire set.

I’ll be updating this text with observations during each of the intermissions and depending on how many of you join me, I may do the same for each of the Canada games — we’ll see how it goes.

Grab a coffee and the best seat on the couch because we all know you’re watching this one alone. Cheers!

1st Intermission Update

Canada predictably dominated the early part of the game, drawing penalties and creating chances. The first goal, scored by Xavier Ouellet, was set up by a great pass from the point on the powerplay by Morgan Rielly. Rielly has been demoted to the 2nd PP unit in favour of Ryan Murphy who was decidedly ‘meh’ in the first.

Canada’s second goal also came on the PP and was scored by RNH. Huberdeau’s great North-South pass in the offensive zone is a much tougher play than it seems.

The Germans, to their credit, applied some pretty solid pressure during the second half of the first period and were rewarded with a powerplay goal of their own off of the stick of another guy Spott will be familiar with in Kitchener / Edmonton’s Tobias Rieder.

2nd Intermission Update

Canada looked a lot more dominant in the second than the first. Canada’s third goal of the game and first of the period was scored by Scheifele after a hard bounce off the glass saw the puck fall on his stick.

Canada’s fourth goal came after a beautiful pass from Dougie Hamilton found Huberdeau for a powerplay marker.

Canada’s fifth was another case of a Canada player finding himself alone in front of the net and Ty Rattie made no mistake.

Then the Germans went to work, most notably Leon Draisaitl who has looked like every bit the elite prospect he is. He isn’t even draft eligible until 2014 but he’s been the best player on the German team and has provided a great mix of offense and defense. Draisaitl set up Germany’s second goal by Pfoderl.

Nickolas Latta then capitalized on a brutal giveaway by McNeill which brought the score to 6-3. Horrible turnover but a great shot by Latta.

Finally, with seconds left in the second period, Scheifele scored again on a great transition play by himself and linemates RNH and Jonathan Huberdeau.

As my fingers beg for mercy after all this intermission typing, we’re now sitting at 7-3 Canada.

9-3 Final

The third period was a little bit tighter checking from Canada’s perspective. Jonathan Drouin scored Canada’s 8th goal, making a nice move in front of the net after taking a clever slap-pass from Harrington.

Canada’s 9th and final goal was scored by Tyler Wotherspoon with the assist to Ryan Strome. Wotherspoon hustled back to break up a two-on-one and reaped the reward at the other end.

All told, it was pretty much what we expected from Canada. There are a few defensive kinks to work out, the chemistry on the bottom lines seems to have taken a bit of a hit with Jenner out of the lineup, but the top unit was spectacular and the result in this one was never in doubt.

Curt writes prospect stuff here, writes Leafs-related content at Blue Chip Prospects, and writes whatever he wants (with a 140 character limit) on Twitter. He also prefers being called 'Curt' to 'BCP' as he is not a robot, but he'll answer to either.